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Trading the crushed harmonics of their basement tapes for studio-grade mics, overdubs in the mix, and only slightly less-bruised melodies, Birds of Maya's roiling essence not only survives, but thrives, non-stop, on Valdez, stuttering, screaming and stomping through six circuitous numbers. With their undulated and unfettered riffage mutated into raw power, Birds project their sound to burst through the basement and spill into the streets.
 

"Please Come In" is pulled from way back in early pre-Mayan consciousness, and... (read more)

2020's done come and gone; a fuzzy void of lost time and lost opportunity. But just when you thought you were safe, 2020 is back, in the form of a long-awaited repress of Magik Markers' all-new album from last fall. 2020 offers proof positive that work born of uncertain times can transcend the untethered ether of those dark days. The Markers built 2020 in this same timeless fashion they've always worked in - fighting like fungi through the cracks in the sidewalk of the past 50 years. A... (read more)

In January 2019, at the invitation of fiddler Hans Kjorstad, Alasdair Roberts traveled from his home in Glasgow, Scotland to Oslo, Norway, where the two men convened with five additional Scandinavian musicians at Riksscenen, Oslo’s centre for Norwegian traditional arts and music. The group was named Völvur (The Seeresses), a reference to the ancient Icelandic apocalyptic text Völuspa (The Prophecy of the Seeress).

The musicians who make up Völvur — Marthe Lea, Fredrik Rasten, Andreas Hoem Røysum, Egil Kalman, Jan Martin Gismervik and the aforementioned... (read more)

Seeking refuge from the assailing world deep within their music, bassist Joshua Abrams and drummer Chad Taylor wield, respectively, the guimbri and mbira, instruments from diverse African states, and find a pairing that advances their reigning vision, brilliantly exposited as something new. As in: a new age of music, fusing meditation, sound and dance in convergence with listening – truly a 21st century space for Mind Maintenance!
 

"The Ladder" makes evident the inventive and symphonic reach of... (read more)

Matt Sweeney and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy present “Resist the Urge” off of Superwolves. The video was made by legendary skateboarder Kevin “Spanky” Long and photographer/skateboarder Atiba Jefferson, and features Spanky skating through a Bonny-Sweeneyscape in his inimitable style.

“Resist the Urge” was recorded at the Butcher Shoppe in Nashville by Sean Sullivan and  David "Fergie" Ferguson. Sez Bonny: “We got David Ferguson out from behind the board to play double-bass on this one. It needed the lift that only a Ferg could deliver."  It should be... (read more)

Who is E.R. Jurken? The mysterious figure looming behind dazzling layers of vocals, his own voice the instrument at center stage, stands ready at last to issue his debut full length, I Stand Corrected later this week. Meanwhile, "John Doe" is the latest single to drop from the roll, airy and fertile, its neo-saccharine sound evoking a bygone daze on its own terms.

 

It's pure pop of the lightest order, with... (read more)

A long era of dull ringing and nothing else in our ears is over. Once again, winds of warm guitar and humid thunderheads of bass and toms rumble all around. With Valdez, Birds of Maya are back in flight. And like the first song title explicitly states, this latest is a soaring blast of riffers, rife with punk rock abandon, sludge, treble, distortion, neck-throttling rock n roll solos, pummeling drums and bass and half-shouted/half-gargled vocals, all of it half on and half off the... (read more)

Standing tall against an open sky, E.R. Jurken and his spectral tenor (refracted via multiple overdubs) move across an oft-deserted soundscape, leaving behind them the footfalls of incandescent orchestral pop music (with the orchestra mostly erased). On his lonesome, Jurken's formidable energy populates the landscape with choruses of vocal color on I Stand Corrected.
 

"Right Through" is an exemplary E.R. Jurken miniature in full band rock mode: a slice of bedroom... (read more)

Mind Maintenance is the new duo consisting of Joshua Abrams (Natural Information Society) and Chad Taylor (Chicago Underground Duo, Chad Taylor Trio). This is where the music begins, but Mind Maintenance can’t be described simply as a summation of it's parts and players. When you put on the sound, you’ll know what we’re saying - you'll notice how immediate and meditative it is; how simple, how "in the room," and how the natural buzz of each instrument sits remarkably well against... (read more)

WANTED: a valid reevaluation of the depiction of life in America's old west! With "Cowboy", a single from Gold Record, Bill Callahan acknowledges the long-prevailing fantasy, now in the province of the late movie, in itself an artifact of a former time. Dryer than a quarter-century of drought, Bill's song echoes the sweet melancholy of that vision, subtly decontextualizing the images of freedom and manifest destiny, allowing us to see them as a fictive projection - one that only exists in our collective mind.
... (read more)